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"The face of the operation is Briatore (referred to exclusively in the film by his colleagues and angry, chanting detractors as "Flavio"), an anthropomorphic radish who spends most of his time at QPR plotting to fire all of the managers."

At press time, Harbaugh had sent Michigan’s athletic department an envelope containing a heavily annotated seating chart, a list of the 63,000 seat views he had found unsatisfactory, and a glowing 70-page report on section 25, row 12, seat 9, which he claimed is “exactly what the great sport of football is all about.”

Public Service Message: Avoid today's Free Press

Our old buddy Snyder and the Freep have graced us this Sunday with a MASSIVE recounting, from several perspectives, of The Horror. To call it a history would be apropos. I saw it online and do not know if it is in the print edition, but if it is it's got to cover more than a hundred column inches.

I did not (could not) read it and you will get no link from me.

"Just for once I'd like to see all these things sort of straightened out, with each person getting exactly what he deserves. It might give me some confidence in this universe."

I'd be very surprised if this is the only oral history of The Horror. And I'm sure ESPN.com and SI and a half dozen other CFB sites will have retrospectives too. And I can't wait for College GameDay to have a segment about it. Anybody got an over/under on the number of times the FG block will be replayed during the game broadcast? What a way to get Michgan fans pumped up for the start of college football season.

Memories of the absolute horse shit preparation and performance by Lloyd Carr and his staff would slowly fade into the background unless there was a reason for all of the media outlets to reminisce about it at the same time. And DB provided the reason.

It has nothing to do with the opinion of the media. It has everything to do with not being able to enjoy the usual previews in anticipation of the season without everyone having a convenient excuse to dredge up memories of the worst single week in Michigan football history.

OSU and MSU are conference rivals with respectable teams. We're going to have to play them every year, and beating them will actually prove something. The App St. game was completely avoidable and here is no margin of victory that will stop people from talking about that one time we lost to them.

You or I may not care, but there's a lot of people who do. And there's a lot of people who do not appreciate the negative publicity that comes from it. Negative attention that was completely unnecessary and avoidable. There is no upside to this game, at all. It's not just the media.

what he claims to understand, which is branding. The negative media attention doesn't matter except for the fact that it dredges up a clear negative about Michigan football nationwide, and therefore is harmful to its reputation. A week or two of this is coming, and the funny thing is it all could be avoided. And even worse, a win will do NOTHING to erase that, because it's App St. Yet another thing he is clueless about.

"Before I could pull the trigger, I was hit by lightning, and bitten by a cobra."

the captain who bailed on his sinking ship...I still loathe that bastard. Always will. He took a team that had national prominence, mostly in tact that was considered to face a rematch for the national championship...and fell to Appilachian State...it is what it is, don't hate on the Freep just because we couldn't close on a team. Why that game was even scheduled in the first place was a big mystery, WTF we scheduled them AGAIN...is even bigger...sorry, you want to be a national powerhouse, PLAY NATIONALLY RANKED/ESTABLISHED teams. When we had pride and respect, we played Colorado, Miami- the one in Florida!, FSU, Oregon, ND, UCLA...and guess what, we lost a number of those games, but you still played through it, and the team didn't lose any credibility. And in the end it made the program stronger.

Instead we now play a bunch of cream puffs...wonder when Slippery Rock makes the schedule? People bitch and moan about uniformzes and macaroni in the stadium...how about IMPROVE THE PROGRAM AND THE REST TAKES CARE OF ITSELF? YOU WANT TO SELL TICKETS, WIN GAMES AGAINST GOOD PROGRAMS...nobody wants to see a marginal win against little sisters of the poor.

The big reason for the general boycott is the story they ran on Rodriguez that kicked off the "practice gate" scandal. They made up a bunch of stuff, exaggerated a bunch of other stuff, choose to ignore pertinent elements of the NCAA rule book, and did things like trick freshmen into giving what sounded like damning quotes that they then presented out of context. Basically, it was a super unethical hit job that brought "major" violations to UM and was one more black eye on Rodriguez's tenure here (even though the small violations that did occur weren't Rodriguez's fault, but were the fault of some screw ups and neglect in the compliance office). They even had the gall to claim that the NCAA's findings vindicated them, when the findings weren't anywhere close to what the Freep alleged was happening.

That and they generate attention by generally attacking UM, knowing it'll lead to clicks and page views. Their UM coverage is essentially trolling.

"...I wouldn't be so sure those women were innocent. The children are obviously innocent - if they are less than five."

Among other things, tricking a bunch of our freshmen that year into giving them quotes that, presented out of context, really put the program in a bad light, sinking the Rodriguez ship even faster. If I remember correctly from Three and Out, Brian even confronted Snyder/Rosenberg about all of this after a press conference, and they just blew him off.

Wow, what an inventive idea for an article! Who could have ever seen this coming? Snyder must really be a great journalist for conjuring up such a UNIQUE masterpiece!

You know what was worse than that article, Snyder? Your bumbling, inaccurate, lightly-researched 'investigative' piece that set the program back years. I'm not sure how Brandon lets them in the building for press conferences; if it was up to me, the only thing Snyder would be getting out of Schembechler Hall would be turds wrapped in unsold copies of yesterday's Free Press.

If you actually read the story (and, unfortunately, most of you won't), it's actually really fascinating. As much as we want to forget this happened, it's pretty interesting to hear the story told from nearly every perspective behind the scenes.

One thing I'd be interested to know, and BIll Martin claims not to remember, but who exactly were the other teams under consideration when they scheduled the game?

"Van Bergen: "This is a weird thing to pride yourself on, but if you watch Gingell run that guy down, how many kickers, with the game lost, are going to run that guy down and catch him at the 5-yard line? To me, that let me know we were at the right school. We may not have done things right (that day), but that showed you there was some integrity and character on the team and regardless of what the score ended up being, the season wasn't lost."

If the only person (I can't bring myself to use the term journalist) writing about the coming game was Drew Sharp, I wouldn't be that concerned. What is much more potentially annoying is the SportsCenter endless loop. If Vincent Smith received a dollar for every time one particular highlight was played, he probably could buy an NFL franchise.